Monday, August 31, 2009

Tim threw a set of cad plated 18 inch wheels on our 37 today. When we bought the bike it had 16 inch rims on it, and they looked terrible. The rims were from 1948, so the original owner had put them on after world war 2.

Holy Moly!!!!!!! This looks so much better.

Down side.

The fellow that we bought the bike from had re plated the original air cleaner , and it was way to shiny for the rest of the bike. I ran one of my reproduction 6 inch air cleaners last summer, and this year I put on this original air cleaner. It was missing 3 hooks, so I had to drill into the backing plate and set it up for some self tapping screws.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Here is Tim's 46 frame all welded back together and straightened out. It turned out really well, We replaced the whole front half of it. Check out older post to see how it worked. I have just been working on frames for the last two weeks, we have been getting a lot done.

We bought a set of 41 to 46 tanks a couple years ago and had our painter strip them, he found this interesting repair in the top of each tank. I have never seen anything like it. These tanks were mint before somebody tried to fix them. They probably would have been good enough to chrome plate until somebody mutilated them. Oh WEll

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

It has been a while since I have done a new parts update, so here is a new deal that I am really excited about!!! These are frogeyes for early 36 knuckleheads. I found an original one at Wauseon last year and had a die made up to punch them out. They turned out really well. My friend Joe made the die and did an awesome job. I still have to have some screws and plugs made up, so they can be sold as a kit.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Here is a picture showing some of the holes in Tim's frame. There were a total of 25 holes that needed to be welded up, ground, filed and sanded in the back half of his frame. The neck and sidecar loops were beyond repair, so I didn't have to worry about the 30 holes in the front half of his frame.

Where did all of the holes go????

Tim's frame had had the same seat post problem as the frame in the posts below, so I repeated the seat post repair.

This is what the frame looks like right now, I am replacing a bunch of stuff on this frame, it is a lot of fun.

Tim's Frame had the typical 70s chopped axle stays. The frame has my fixture in it for welding the tabs back on. In this pic you can see that the new repair piece is fit up and ready for welding.

Here is the same frame with the tab welded on, ground and textured.

HEre is the left side, You can see the fixture for mounting the centerstand tab to in this pic.

Here is the finished product! This is such an easy fix with the pieces that I cast up. It used to take me two days to do this repair a couple years ago. I used to make all of the pieces from scratch, weld, grind, weld some more, grind some more. Now it takes five hours to fix em up.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

This isn't the best picture for showing you guys what was wrong with this seat post. This particular bike had the seat post cut out for a larger motor at one time. Somebody tried to fix it by welding in a piece of tubing. It is a mediocre repair. It probably would have been good enough if we were not running a seat post, but that is not the case.

In this pic you can see the air bubbles from the last guys weld, There is tons of slag and metal inside the post, a pogo stick didn't fit in the hole because of all of the debris.

Here is the pipe cutter that I used for marking out my reference lines.

45 and later seat posts are welded at the top, and bottom of the casting. They are a lot easier to remove than the earlier seat posts, which are sweated in. On later frames, all you have to do is sand through the weld until you start seeing the two different metals, you can see the separation in the upper left hand corner. Sand the welds until you can see the separation all the way around the outer diameter of the seat post on the top and bottom.

Then you can knock the tube out with a hammer and punch.

I used a pipe cutter to mark a line around the circumference of the seat post, this is where I will cut the old damaged post out. This gives me a good reference point to go off of.

I have been grinding the metal from the outer tube away, and you can start to see some of the brass from the inner reinforcement tube peaking through. As soon as you see brass, you move onto a different area.

In this pic, the rough grinding is about half done. After all of the roughing out is done, you start removing metal with a file. This takes forever!!

Here is the finished product. I bored the new tube out to barely slide over the top of this one.

Here you can see the bored out hole in the new tube, and the holes that have been drilled in it for plug welding. This will be a super strong fix and last thousands of miles.

Here is the seat post placed over the top of original sleeve and ready to be welded. The only way that you will be able to tell that this repair was done, will be the difference in pittting. The frame has a little bit of pitting, and the new seat post has none. Once it is painted, the repair will be un detectable.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Here is a pic of one of my heros--Ole from Sioux falls. I have known ole since I was in 1st grade. He is a great guy. I always thought he was the coolest because he had a knucklehead that he rode the piss out of. I thought about him a bunch while I was out on my knucklehead this summer. He was cruising around on his 39 six days ago and a Mazda ran a stop sign and ole ran into him going 60 mph. This bike is messed up!!! I can't believe that he is up walking around. He broke two vertebrate and bruised his junk. I am so glad that he is ok.

Here is what a front wheel looks like after hitting a mazda. Ole said that he hit the rear wheel of the truck and actually made the truck spin around 180 degrees.

Whoa!!!

Check out the rear leg, I am so glad that he is ok. Ole is one of the nicest guys that you could ever meet. I love him like I love my family. I can't wait to see him back on the road next year.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

A couple of months ago I asked you guys for input on jumping bikes through flaming hoops, I was kind of dissapointed in the responses I got from everybody. This is pretty much all I thought about while I was doing both iron butt runs last month. I have spent everyday since saturday working on sorting out this essay contest stuff, and the 36 stunts kept creeping into my mind. I figured if I drew a blueprint of what I plan on doing it would help me see it in a more clear light. The zombies in the picture will not be real zombies, I plan on having some friends either dress up as zombies, so please dont worry.

Here is the original idea. Jesse came up with adding inflate able crocodiles to the stunt, which I think is a good idea, it will bring a lot to it. I am going to build the ramps after davenport sometime. It is going to be so cool!!!! If any of you guys have any constructive input like /mathematical equations on this subject fill me in